tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1340473668962842022.post2841677569406142219..comments2023-10-31T07:36:16.561-04:00Comments on Beach Sloth: Is suing four year olds for negligence a lucrative business model?Beach Slothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01487203406227378909noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1340473668962842022.post-60991099717095660892010-11-04T00:13:07.371-04:002010-11-04T00:13:07.371-04:00Thank you Lolz. I'm glad that somebody else se...Thank you Lolz. I'm glad that somebody else sees the light. As I was reading the comments on this article, I thought:<br /><br />"Whoa, I can't believe that people aren't worried about whether or not it is moral, but whether or not it is legal".<br /><br />I get worried sometimes.Beach Slothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01487203406227378909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1340473668962842022.post-19687045848638714802010-11-02T13:31:01.161-04:002010-11-02T13:31:01.161-04:00Textbook definition of negligence: doing something...Textbook definition of negligence: doing something that a reasonable (prudent) person would NOT do; or, not doing something that a reasonable person WOULD do. Examples: leaving your children in a hot car for hours, or not changing your child's diaper for 48 hours, respectively.<br /><br />The reason that Granny Clare's family is not suing the mother--the obvious candidate for a lawsuit--is because there is nothing negligent about letting your child use a bicycle on the sidewalk. If the child wasn't old enough, or was on the street, or the woman's driveway, then we might have another story. But it seems like Juliet both did what a reasonable person would do, and didn't do what a reasonable person wouldn't do.<br /><br />So now we move to the child. The child probably "reasonably" shouldn't have smacked into GC. But there are two problems with this. 1) Again, with the understanding that she was properly using the bike in an area designated for bikes, as long as she didn't willfully speed up to crash into her, I think they're going to have a hard time proving there is any fault to be assigned here. 2) But much more importantly, can anyone call a 4 year old "reasonable"? In fact, it seems like the very laws that govern our country don't even consider 17 year olds to be reasonable enough to vote, or most people under 16 reasonable enough to make decisions about their sexual health. <br /><br />Yes, we're talking about "reasonableness" required to make major life decisions versus "basic reasonableness", but I don't think anyone would argue that a four year old has any capacity to make any decision more reasonable than, say "I would like to draw with the blue crayon instead of the red one".Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00800945285096775472noreply@blogger.com